Posted on 05/11/2007 8:00:54 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
Jurors deliberated just one day before finding Juan Luna guilty Thursday of killing seven people in a Palatine Brown's Chicken restaurant in 1993, bringing a swift and tearful end to a 14-year wait for victims' families.
As the guilty verdicts were read, family members of the victims clutched one another and prayed. Luna sighed heavily. He removed his wire-frame glasses to wipe tears from his face with a white napkin.
Luna, 33, was convicted after a 14-day trial in Cook County Criminal Court that repeatedly toldand showedhow the victims were found shot and stuffed in a cooler and freezer."This is what he deserves, to be found guilty. It seems like a resolution," said Jessica Nellsen, whose father, Marcus, was killed. "I've grown up without a dad since I was 5. This can't bring back my childhood."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
14 years to bring this to trial?
Was he locked up that whole time?
And thanks to RINO George Ryan, Illinois no longer uses the death penalty.
The jury was excused for the evening and was told to return to court Monday to begin deciding whether Luna would receive the death penalty. His friend, James Degorski, 34, is awaiting trial.
... and if just one of the victims had a gun .... oh, I forgot, it’s the safe, gun free zone of Chicago ....
Justive sure is swift here in the good old USA.
Sorry bout the misspelling of Justice in that post. I know I would hear about it.
To link Luna to the crime, prosecutors put Anne Lockett and Eileen Bakalla, high school friends of Luna's and Degorski's, on the stand. They testified separately that they knew about the crimes soon after they occurred in 1993 but kept quiet until 2002.
Bakalla testified that she picked the men up hours after they allegedly committed the murders and did drugs with them later that night. She said she took $50 from Degorski and heard the men talking about the crimes. She said she feared Luna, who she said gave her the "heebie-jeebies."
Luna's defense lawyers questioned why the women waited so long to come forward and attempted to depict them as drug addicts whose histories were so unstable that they could not be believed. To cast doubt on Luna's confession, his lawyers played a 1999 videotaped confession from a Mt. Prospect man who never was charged. A Cook County prosecutor who worked on the case testified that they never believed the Mt. Prospect man, who claimed to have a "vision" about the crime, because of conflicting details he gave and because evidence did not support it. 'This is justice, finally' Luna's lawyers called his brother Jorge and his sister Brenda, who testified that police purposely hid him away after arresting him May 16, 2002. By the time they saw Luna the next day, he had given the confession, they testified.
Not from meee. (I mean me).
No, they only found out who did it and made the arrests in the last few years.
14 years then whammo, a swift one day. Make yer head spin clean off.
Who'da thought a dingbat like Luna could pull of the Avada Kedavra curse.....
This adds to it but I'm not signing up to the Chigago Tribune.
Actually Palatine is a suburb. Not sure of their gun laws.
bugmenot.com
In Illinois, he could earn the death penalty and still die and old man.
They haven’t offed anyone in years.
Thanks for the info.
Makes more sense now.
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